Box Office Failures Highlight Cultural Shift
Originally posted in August 2004.
The summer of 2004 has already seen Shrek 2 clear the coveted $400 million dollar mark, with Spiderman 2 close on its heels. Yet most big budget films haven’t done so well. Two recent box office busts in particular, Mona Lisa Smile and The Stepford Wives draw attention to a cultural shift that is taking place in our nation. Both movies had a lot of star power and large promotional budgets in their favor, yet according to boxofficemojo.com, Mona Lisa Smile grossed just under $64 million domestically, failing to make back it’s $90 million production and marketing costs. The Stepford Wives opened with a semi-respectable $21 million weekend, but after a month on the market, grossed just $55 million total, far short of the $125 million it cost to make and promote.
Both pictures were carried by the same basic premise: the post-World War II pop-culture image of American femininity as immortalized in “Leave it to Beaver” is bad. Under Julia Roberts’ tutelage in “Smile,” young coeds learn that they have talents and gifts, and should aspire to more than just marriage and motherhood. Nicole Kidman’s character in “Wives” exposes the secret truth that only severely brainwashed or robot women (screenwriters apparently couldn’t decide which) would ever give up the true fulfillment of high-powered careers to serve their husbands. The conclusion? Women should be allowed to think for themselves, not serve as vacuous sexual appendages to their chauvinistic husbands. And while this idea might have seemed even a little revolutionary in 1954, fifty years later, it has literally been done to death.
My personal feeling is that the feminist pendulum has swung about as far to the left as it’s going to swing. A lot of us Gen-Xer’s were raised by those enlightened moms, who got the fulfilling careers and divorces that the sexual revolution won for them, and we’ve said “enough already.” Thankfully, very few women today would affirm a Stepford wife image of mindless physical perfection as a worthy personal aspiration. And likewise, fewer and fewer young women view college as merely something to pass the time before marriage. Yet many of us do choose to prioritize family over personal ambition. Does that make us naïve or, heaven forbid, robotic?
Indeed, from a biblical perspective, it was the materialistic badge of female idleness (see Proverbs 31:27) that should have been condemned in the 1950’s, not the vitally important role of serving a family. Since our founding, our nation has continually grown to realize more completely the vision of the Declaration of Independence, that everyone is created equal. We are not perfect, yet America remains the fullest expression of the equal value of all human beings that the world has ever seen. Gender feminism made the fatal mistake of assuming that this equality somehow mandated the dismantling of the biblical family. The tepid response of the public to these two over-hyped films demonstrates the backlash against the fruit of their labor.
I would like to think that I am part of a new generation of women who understand that one hundred percent devotion to our husbands and children and excelling in our personal gifts and talents are not mutually exclusive ideas. Modern technology enables me to continue a modest career from home, while assisting my husband in ministry, and homeschooling my three children along with however many more the Lord will bless us with. This is the miracle of living in an era when washing machines and dishwashers complete tasks in minutes that took our grandmothers hours!
I wish the screenwriters for gender advocacy movies realized that a healthy family is a win-win scenario for every member, not a recipe for female oppression. Raising my children fulltime has released a personal level of creativity and efficiency in me that I had never thought possible. I believe my children benefit from the fact that I am also using the energy and character they give me toward achievement beyond the home. My husband rushes to get home everyday, because it is a loving and peaceful place to be, not because I behave like a well-made-up robot when he walks in the door.
It is a shame that sacrificial devotion to family is still distorted and maligned in the mainstream entertainment industry. Fortunately, it seems that most people know better. While the anti-family brand of feminism continues to appeal to a core audience, that group is shrinking substantially. May those of us who know better continue to disprove their lies with our lives!
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